As Glyn recently wrote about, while governments around the world are busy diving further and further into their citizens personal communications over their cell phones and the internet, the implementation of cryptography has been slow to catch up. We could point to several reasons for this, but chief among them appears to be the difficulty in encryption for the average user. Now, an ex-Navy SEAL and security defense contractor is looking to change that.

Mike Janke is releasing a finished application, called Silent Circle, that is designed to provide encryption for communication and is supposedly easy to use. We've heard that promise before, so we'll have to see how close the reality matches the claims, but the goals are certainly lofty.

Named Silent Circle, it is in essence a series of applications that can be used on a mobile device to encrypt communications—text messages, plus voice and video calls. Currently, apps for the iPhone and iPad are available, with versions for Windows, Galaxy, Nexus, and Android in the works. An email service is also soon scheduled to launch.

The encryption is peer to peer, which means that Silent Circle doesn’t centrally hold a key that can be used to decrypt people’s messages or phone calls. Each phone generates a unique key every time a call is made, then deletes it straight after the call finishes. When sending text messages or images, there is even a “burn” function, which allows you to set a time limit on anything you send to another Silent Circle user—a bit like how “this tape will self destruct” goes down in Mission: Impossible, but without the smoke or fire.

Without the smoke or fire? What the hell is the point? Well, according to Janke, the point is civil liberties. He states that the idea for this service, which will be subscription based, came about during his time overseas. He noted the lack of an easy to use but still secure method for calling his family back home, while also recognizing the erosion of civil liberties from government snooping, and decided to develop Silent Circle. His development team includes some notable figures, such as Phil Zimmerman (who invented PGP encryption) and Jon Callas (responsible for Apple's whole-disk encryption). Silent Circle is reportedly light years easier to use than other encryption methods and already has several customers, including international news outlets and special forces military units.

Still, despite governments seeing the value in the application for their own military forces, you just had to know they wouldn't be pleased with it appearing for use by the general public. But Janke insists the company has its bases covered to protect its customers.

The very features that make Silent Circle so valuable from a civil liberties and privacy standpoint make law enforcement nervous. Telecom firms in the United States, for instance, have been handing over huge troves of data to authorities under a blanket of secrecy and with very little oversight. Silent Circle is attempting to counter this culture by limiting the data it retains in the first place. It will store only the email address, 10-digit Silent Circle phone number, username, and password of each customer. It won’t retain metadata (such as times and dates calls are made using Silent Circle). Its IP server logs showing who is visiting the Silent Circle website are currently held for seven days, which Janke says the company plans to reduce to just 24 hours once the system is running smoothly.

Now, to be fair, there have been promises of easy to use and secure encryption methods in the past, and they've failed to gain any steam. Likewise, the open source community is enormously important in validating the security and usability of this kind of thing, and there are some questions being posed about exactly how much Silent Circle will be available for testing.

Nadim Kobeissi, a Montreal-based security researcher and developer, took to his blog last week to pre-emptively accuse the company of “damaging the state of the cryptography community.” Kobeissi’s criticism was rooted in an assumption that Silent Circle would not be open source, a cornerstone of encrypted communication tools because it allows people to independently audit coding and make their own assessments of its safety (and to check for secret government backdoors). Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the ACLU's Speech Privacy and Technology Project, said he was excited to see a company like Silent Circle visibly competing on privacy and security but that he was waiting for it to go open source and be audited by independent security experts before he would feel comfortable using it for sensitive communications.

Janke has indicated that, to some extent at least, Silent Circle will be available for scrutiny, though exactly to what level remains to be seen. That said, he is housing his infrastructure outside of the United States for fear of laws that would require him to build in back doors for government snooping. As a start up, he's asking for a great deal of trust from his users, but all the right words appear to be there.

But what if, one day down the line, things change and Canada or another country where Silent Circle has servers tries to force them to build in a secret backdoor for spying? Janke has already thought about that—and his answer sums up the maverick ethos of his company.

“We won’t be held hostage,” he says, without a quiver of hesitation. “All of us would rather shut Silent Circle down than ever allow a backdoor or be bullied into an ‘or else’ position.”

The question I find more interesting is does something like Silent Circle initiate the first United States government outlawing of an otherwise legal application?

Earlier this year, we wrote about plans by Iceland to crowdsource its new Constitution, and over the weekend, residents in Iceland voted (overwhelmingly) to say that they were pleased with the result. Nearly half of Iceland's eligible voters participated, with 66% voting in favor of the new Constitution -- which was put together by a 25-person committee, but which made extensive use of social media and other means to crowdsource input. There are a lot of really interesting things related to the internet and internet freedom happening in Iceland these days, and countries that ignore what's happening there do so at their own peril.

Dogs have been domesticated for thousands of years, and there's been some speculation that humans and dogs have co-evolved to some extent. So it would be nice to understand our domesticated friends a bit better, and technology could help us out. We've seen products like Bowlingual for translating dog barks into human languages, and here are just a few more interesting links on human-dog relationships.

• Researchers are using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to try to understand what dogs are thinking. Two dogs have been trained to stand completely still while their brains are scanned, and one of the dogs is a squirrel-hunting dog -- so maybe these neuroscientists will be able to see what part of a dog's brain activates when someone says, "Squirrel!" [url]
• Doggelganger is a fun way to match up people and dogs that are up for adoption. Dogs and their owners are supposed to grow to look like each other, but what if facial recognition software made it possible for you to adopt a dog that already looked like you from the start? [url]
• Does neutering pets cause any kind of depression for our beloved domesticated animals? Vets may want to change the way they make pets sterile if enough pet owners are convinced that there's even a possibility of post-neutering depression. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Twitter has put itself out there as being a strong defender of free speech, arguing that it's not just a principled stand, but one that provides the company with a competitive advantage. Standing up for free speech is good -- not just for people, but for Twitter too. There was a series of stories highlighting this aspect of Twitter in the past few months, where Twitter's top lawyer, Alex Macgillivray, said things like the following:

“We value the reputation we have for defending and respecting the user’s voice,” Mr. Macgillivray said in an interview here at Twitter headquarters. “We think it’s important to our company and the way users think about whether to use Twitter, as compared to other services.”

With that in mind, it's interesting to see just how much "free speech" via Twitter has taken off in places like Saudi Arabia. The NY Times has an interesting discussion on how Twitter has become a surprisingly open channel for critics of the Saudi regime.

Open criticism of this country’s royal family, once unheard-of, has become commonplace in recent months. Prominent judges and lawyers issue fierce public broadsides about large-scale government corruption and social neglect. Women deride the clerics who limit their freedoms. Even the king has come under attack.

All via Twitter. So far, the government has let this continue -- even as members of the royal family are often directly called out and, at times, accused of corruption. Some think that the government is hoping that letting people vent on Twitter will keep them from venting in the streets. But there is still fear that things might change and a real crackdown could be on the way.

And that could represent a real challenge for Twitter. Remember, just last week, it agreed to block a neo-nazi group's Twitter feed in Germany. And, there are also reports that it recently removed a bunch of anti-semitic tweets, potentially for terms of service violations. And that is worrying some people.

Several Twitter users posting under the hashtag criticized the decision to delete the anti-Semitic posts, calling it censorship. A user calling himself Andre said: “Better to educate than censure. Shame on you Twitter.” Another, Craig McLeod, asked, “Who decides what is anti-Semitic and abusive?”

Considering all that, as Mathew Ingram has asked: what happens if Saudi Arabia suddenly declares the criticism its government is facing is illegal? Then what does Twitter do? Does it decide that the openness is something it wants to support as free speech... or does it abide by the law and block those accounts? Suddenly, the problem is a lot more challenging.

I don't know that there's an easy answer, but it does seem that once you compromise on one front, it becomes somewhat more difficult to justify a principled stand elsewhere...

With the passing of former Senator and Presidential candidate George McGovern this weekend, the Wall Street Journal reran a 1992 column he wrote about how much he learned from trying to start a business after he'd left politics. TheMoneyIllusion has an excerpt as well:

In 1988, I invested most of the earnings from this lecture circuit acquiring the leasehold on Connecticut’s Stratford Inn. Hotels, inns and restaurants have always held a special fascination for me. The Stratford Inn promised the realization of a longtime dream to own a combination hotel, restaurant and public conference facility — complete with an experienced manager and staff.

In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn’s 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender.

He goes on to talk about how all sorts of crazy regulations, that may have appeared to make sense to the politicians passing them, were actually serving to create a huge headache for businesses -- often because whoever is writing the laws has no idea what they're talking about:

In short, “one-size-fits-all” rules for business ignore the reality of the marketplace. And setting thresholds for regulatory guidelines at artificial levels — e.g., 50 employees or more, $500,000 in sales — takes no account of other realities, such as profit margins, labor intensive vs. capital intensive businesses, and local market economics.

The problem we face as legislators is: Where do we set the bar so that it is not too high to clear? I don’t have the answer. I do know that we need to start raising these questions more often.

When we talk about Washington DC (and other governments) passing regulations that impact how entrepreneurs and innovators build great new companies, this is the kind of thing that we're worried about. The vast majority of elected officials really have no idea. They pass rules and regulations that sound good and are meant to serve a good purpose, but they rarely take into account the consequences of the regulations they pass or how they'll impact how companies act. This is not to say that there shouldn't be regulations, but that regulators need (a) a much better understanding of business and (b) they need to be aware that the impact of regulations can be stifling. I've never understood why every piece of legislation that will impact companies doesn't come with specific metrics to determine if it's a success and a mandatory review period / sunset provision, in which an independent board is tasked with determining if the law accomplished what it set out to do, and if there were any costly side effects or unintended consequences.

McGovern seemed to discover all that after his political career was over, but with his passing, perhaps we can encourage current politicians to recognize just how big an issue this is today. Especially when we rely on so many new technologies, innovations and services on a daily basis.

The awesome folks over at Planet Money recently did a podcast about why Korean pop music (K-Pop) is taking over the world, using (obviously) Gangnam Style as exhibit number one. Of course, you could argue that one faddish song is not proof that they're taking over the industry, so there's a bit of journalistic hyperbole at work here -- but the larger point comes clear in the podcast: the US's music industry was built for the 20th century -- a world of scarcity, limited distribution channels, hyperfocus on music and a strong reliance on copyright -- but the Korean pop music landscape is focused on a much more 21st century strategy.

They focus on "industrializing" the production of music, with hit factories and star making academies. They focus on a multimedia experience. Korean pop music is released on TV. New debuts are released on TV with a video... and, of course, via YouTube. And that's the third point: Korea is incredibly wired. It was the first country with 3G networks in place and one of the first to have super high bandwidth broadband widely available. The end result? The industry, mostly built up in the past two decades, is built for the modern digital world, while the US industry still pines for the way things used to be. And that has some people worrying that, like many other products that the US used to lead in only to see foreign countries take them over, Korea might supplant the US in cultural exports over time. I still think there's a long, long way to go before that happens, but it is a scenario worth considering. It is still held back somewhat by the language barriers, but that's hardly a complete game stopper.

Of course, we've written about this before. Nearly four years ago, I wrote about seeing Korean music mogul JY Park speak about the K-Pop industry, of which he's a leading player. The points he made back then fit nicely with what Planet Money's report noted, but take it even further. One point he made was that the K-Pop world really took off as an industry once broadband became common. I'm reaching back 4 years into my memory banks, but I'm pretty sure he said the tipping point was when 70% of the country had high speed broadband connections. At that point, the business of just selling music was no longer the real business he was in. Instead, it was all about building up multimedia stars for the global stage, with a diverse set of revenue streams that rely little on using copyright to get royalties. He talked about the academies where they train artists -- picking those who are bilingual and who can act as well as sing. Basically, the K-Pop world expanded what it meant to be in the music business, changing the definition to suit the times... and it's working.

There is no reason to think that the South Korean music business is about to surpass the US's any day now, but there's no set rule that the most popular music has to come from the US forever. And those countries who encourage efforts that embrace the future and what the technology allows would seem to be in a much better position to go after the big opportunities.

For a long time, trademark law was one of the few aspects of intellectual property that I thought I understood. The government allows some limited exclusivity over a brand so that, as commerce occurs, customers wouldn't be duped into buying one thing when they intended to buy another (or some variation of this equation). Except that relatively recently there has been a push to expand both the rights and reasons for trademarks further, introducing things like the concepts of "tarnishment" and "dilution" to the discussion. As Mike wrote in that piece:

The theories behind such efforts have always seemed quite questionable and, as with these kinds of laws, the effort to put them into the law (and to expand them) are almost always anecdotal, rather than empirical. So you hear plenty of talk about how even if there isn't any consumer confusion, a brand could be "harmed" by dilution or tarnishment. For example, just recently, we had a discussion about Ben & Jerry's ice cream suing a porn company, for creating porn movies that used covers that looked similar to Ben & Jerry's packaging. We noted a complete lack of likelihood of customer confusion, but, as many of our commenters pointed out, the theory in the lawsuit was more focused on tarnishment.

I happen to agree that without customer confusion, trademark shouldn't apply. Even if one is worried about tarnishment, without the confusion or conflation, tarnishment doesn't happen to the original brand. But what if we make this all just a tad more murky? What if the "brand" in question has no commerce to speak of and in fact boasts that the application of the trademark was not for commercial benefit at all? And what if the trademark is granted for something that is both widely done on a national scale and is so done as a routine part of religious expression? According to the law, trademarks are only supposed to apply to the mark when it's "used in commerce." But, due to people confusingly linking it in to "intellectual" property, many incorrectly believe that it applies to anything they want.

Take the case of Tim Tebow, known best for being the awful backup quarterback to another awful quarterback, who has now been granted filed for a bunch of trademarks on 'Tebowing'. In case you missed the last two years on the internet and don't know what 'Tebowing' is, it's essentially genuflecting in prayer on one knee and bowing your head onto your clenched fist.

Also known as "the-manual-labor-I-had-to-do-every-Sunday-growing-up-ing"

Image source: CC BY 2.0

This is leading some, like Washinton Times Julia Goralka, to question exactly how much Tim Tebow can now influence how the public prays, all thanks to a government brand monopoly via trademark.

As of October 9, 2012, Tim Tebow now owns the trademark for “Tebowing.” Tebow has stated that he did not acquire the trademark for financial gain, and being the good Christian that he is, that is probably true. Tebow’s goal is “to just control how it’s used, make sure it’s used in the right way.”

Actually, he can't control how the public prays at all -- unless they're doing it in a Doritos commercial in a limited way in which the pose looks like Tebow's trademarked pose, and that is likely to confuse people into thinking he had a part in it. Though, if he's admitting that he didn't get the trademark for financial reasons, it raises the question of whether the trademark is valid at all. Remember, trademarks can only be issued for use in commerce. His admission here certainly suggests the trademark is completely bogus. Update: And, as the details show, he only applied for a trademark on the word... not on the actual pose. So this is even less of a big deal.

More troubling, perhaps, is that in this age of "intellectual property expansion" (and the regular conflation of trademark with things like copyright and patents), many people don't understand that trademarks only apply to use in commerce -- and may actually believe that praying like Tebow is no longer allowed without a license. The end result is that this trademarking of Tebowing, rather than making sure that the pose is "used in the right way," just leads to less and less respect for trademark law, as people assume that if you can trademark Tebowing, trademark law is silly.

Of course, no matter how much we'd like to, we can't just blame Tebow for the overreach here. As Techdirt has been noting over the last year or so, there's been a massive increase in sports stars trying to trademark their own (not always) distinct features, catchphrases or nicknames. Sometimes, it seems like they make stuff up just to trademark it.

So the next time you're bent over in prayer (for purely non-commercial reasons, hopefully), fear not: you're not violating Tebow's trademark. But you might want to pray about the situation we're in, in which sports stars think that getting such trademarks is a reasonable use of the law.

A year and a half ago, we wrote about some Italian seismologists who were being tried for manslaughter after a risk assessment they wrote up, in which they concluded that a series of small earthquakes along a faultline wasn't that serious, and the risk of a big earthquake was not that high. About a week later, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck, destroying a bunch of buildings and killing over 300 people. Admittedly, one government official exaggerated what the report said, claiming that there was no danger -- but government officials have a way of taking a nuanced claim and turning it into a crazy absolute. Either way, because of all of this, the seismologists and the government official were charged with manslaughter -- especially after it was claimed that some people stayed inside during the quake, believing the recent reporting about there being no risk.

Because of that, they've now been convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six years in jail. This is despite the fact that the report quite clearly said that "earthquakes were unpredictable, and that building codes in the area needed to be adjusted to provide better seismic safety."

The conviction is tremendously troubling -- and the scientific community is quite rightly up in arms about it. Even more bizarre is that the judge didn't seem to care too much about the concerns everyone was raising. From John Timer's report:

The prosecution had attracted widespread condemnation from the scientific community, with one petition on behalf of the seismologists attracting over 5,000 signatures. But, shockingly, the judge in the case took only a few hours to deliver the verdict, and handed down sentences that were two years longer than those requested by the prosecutor.

It seems like a fairly extreme theory of negligence that would lead one to decide that a "too tame" seismology report was negligent and resulted in manslaughter. And, of course, the chilling effects of such a ruling will be tremendous. Who will be willing to provide such a report in the future? And, if anyone does, won't they now err on the side of "we're all going to die!!" even if the evidence doesn't support that? It's not surprising that people want to spread blame around when there are tragic deaths, but sometimes it goes way, way too far.

We've discussed, many, many times, how copyright holders in the digital age like to play fast and loose with the definition of what is "sold" and what is "licensed." Just today, we've seen Amazon wipe out a woman's ebook collection. As we've joked, many copyright holders like to play Schrodinger's download in which they'll argue that it's a license in some cases, and a sale in other, based on what benefits them the most at that instance. So it's a welcome surprise to find out that publishing giant Random House is unequivocal in making the statement that libraries who buy Random House ebooks own those ebooks. Michael Kelley, at the Library Journal, spoke to Skip Dye, Random House's VP of library & academic marketing and sales, and Dye left no doubt about it:

"We spend a lot of time discussing this with librarians, at conferences and elsewhere, and it’s clear that there is still some confusion out there around whether libraries own their ebooks," Dye said. "Random House's often repeated, and always consistent position is this: when libraries buy their RH, Inc. ebooks from authorized library wholesalers, it is our position that they own them."

He went on to make clear the distinction with licensing:

"This is our business model: we sell copies of our ebooks to an approved list of library wholesalers, and those wholesalers are supposed to resell them to libraries. In our view, this purchase constitutes ownership of the book by the library. It is not a license."

Of course, this raises a question: does that also apply to the public? It would seem inconsistent if it were just for libraries. If I buy a Random House ebook, do I "own" it, or have I licensed it? And... then how does that fit with various ebook retailers, such as Amazon, whose terms seem more like a license? Either way, it's good to see a company like Random House take such a clear position on this matter, when most big copyright holders prefer to avoid the question entirely.

Techdirt has been warning people for several years that they don't really own the ebooks they have on their Amazon Kindles. The most famous demonstration of this was the sudden disappearance of ebook versions of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm (you can't make this stuff up.) But that's nothing compared to what an Amazon customer in Norway now claims the company has done: shut down her Amazon account permanently and locked her Kindle -- all without explanation.

When her ebooks became unavailable, Linn Jordet Nygaard, the customer in question, contacted Amazon to find out what had happened. She received the following reply:

We have found your account is directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies. As such, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed and any open orders have been cancelled.

But the account holder claims to know nothing about any other account, and so she wrote back asking for more details:

As previously advised, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed, as it has come to our attention that this account is related to a previously blocked account. While we are unable to provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, please know that we have reviewed your account on the basis of the information provided and regret to inform you that it will not be reopened.

Please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision.

Unhelpfully, then, Amazon simply re-iterated that the newly-closed account was "related" to another, previously blocked account, wouldn't say why, and emphasized that this was an irrevocable ban, even to the extent of refusing to allow the person accused of this unspecified transgression to open any other account at any point in the future.

Again, Jordet Nygaard not unreasonably sought to find out what the problem was so that she could try to address it. This time, she received an email that is not only willfully unhelpful, but positively insulting thanks to a cheesy veneer of bogus sympathy that has been added for good measure:

We regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. Unfortunately, we will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

We wish you luck in locating a retailer better able to meet your needs and will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

Of course, this is a totally Kafkaesque situation: found guilty of a crime you are not allowed to know, with no way to appeal. Over on Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow has an interesting theory about what might be the issue here:

I'd further speculate that the policy violation that Linn stands accused of is using a friend's UK address to buy Amazon UK English Kindle books from Norway. This is a symptom of Amazon's -- and every single other ebook retailer's -- hopelessness at managing "open territory" for ebooks.

That sounds very plausible, and means that Jordet Nygaard is essentially being punished for the publishing industry's incompetence when it comes to operating in a global online market, where national boundaries make no sense. Bad as that is, it's only a side issue here. What's most troubling is that Amazon not only closed down Jordet Nygaard's account, forbade her from ever opening up one again, and refused to discuss any aspect of its actions with her, but that it apparently has the capability to lock her out from all Kindle ebooks on any device -- and did so.

If you didn't take the hint when Amazon erased a couple of Orwell's books back in 2009, maybe this latest case involving the alleged remote lockout from all ebooks will finally get across the key message here: those Kindle ebooks you thought you had purchased, are actually only rented to you, and can be denied to you without explanation, and without recompense, any time Amazon wants to. The only ebooks you will ever truly own are those stored in open formats without DRM, which therefore allow backups to be made, and used anywhere.

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It sometimes amazes me how some copyright holders exert copyright when it makes absolutely no sense at all. There are plenty of times when -- even if something is covered by copyright -- it would be silly to use it. And, yet, sometimes, it still happens. Take, for example, this story sent over by Aaron DeOliveira. A lawyer, Ernie Svenson, posted a PDF file containing an American Bar Association "ethics opinion" on his blog... and the ABA threatened him with a copyright infringement claim. Remember, this is an ethics opinion from the ABA -- basically telling lawyers how they should act. You would think that they would want such things spread as far and wide as possible. I mean, that's what you would think if you were sensible. But... this is the ABA, and they just think "copyright infringement." Svenson is bewildered by the situation, noting that he would have thought the ABA would also want more lawyers aware of its ethical opinions.

Another lawyer, Carolyn Elefant, who has apparently complained about this stance by the ABA for a while, has set up an online petition asking the ABA to stop copyrighting its ethics opinions, and has also written a fantastic blog post about why it's so stupid for the ABA to do this. She notes that even if you think the RIAA's copyright tactics are ridiculous, at least it can legitimately claim that it thinks it's protecting its constituents. But, you can't make that argument here:

... whether you agree with the RIAA's tactics or not, at least its copyright enforcement activity is intended to protect RIAA's constituents; artists, musicians and record companies who lose money when their music is misappropriated. By contrast, the ABA’s policy of copyrighting ethics opinions -- the source of authority that govern lawyers’ conduct and inform many state bodies regulating lawyers — and locking them behind a paywall hurts lawyers and the public.

She goes on to point out that while she's argued that locking up ethics opinions harms lawyers, she's now realizing that it also harms the public -- for no good reason.

But now I realize that the problem caused by the ABA’s policy goes way beyond lawyers and affects the public.  Members of the public may not realize that lawyers can’t just outsource work to non-firm members without supervision (Ethics Opinion 08-451) or are limited in their ability to change fees in the course of representation  ABA Formal Opinion 11-458 (still online free!). Deprived of access to ethics opinions, clients may tolerate lawyers’ unethical conduct, ultimately prejudicing their case.

I really wonder what the ABA's defense for copyrighting ethics policies are, and why it would go after lawyers who share them. This really feels like a "because we can" situation, no matter how ridiculously counterproductive it is. Unfortunately, when it comes to intellectual property, there are way too many lawyers who seem to think "we can" automatically means "we should."

I wonder if someone could get the ABA to issue an "ethics opinion" on locking up crucial information on lawyer ethics from other lawyers and the public. It seems to me that it would be quite easy to make the argument that it's incredibly unethical.

We've been talking about the first Humble eBook Bundle, which launched recently, and has taken off really successfully. Over the weekend, it zoomed past $1 million in money raised. As author John Scalzi (whose book Old Man's War is included in the bundle) noted, if Humble Bundle purchases were counted by the NY Times every one of the authors would be on the best seller list. Think about that for a second.

More than 70,000 people have bought these books in just two weeks, and the folks at Humble Bundle passed along the news that the current average price of $13.94 (which keeps on rising, as people pay over the average to unlock all the extras) far surpasses all of their previous bundles. And yet, people keep telling us that there are no business models that work and that people won't pay for stuff when they can get it for free? When do we finally put those two bogus assumptions to rest?

Last week, we were among those who reported on a ridiculous attempt by regulators in Minnesota to enforce a regulation aimed at stopping degree mills, by telling various legitimate online learning providers like Coursera that Minnesota residents couldn't take courses from without state approval. Thankfully, all of the attention has caused Minnesota officials to admit that this was silly and back down. According to Larry Pogemiller, director of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education:

Obviously, our office encourages lifelong learning and wants Minnesotans to take advantage of educational materials available on the Internet, particularly if they’re free. No Minnesotan should hesitate to take advantage of free, online offerings from Coursera.

He also said that the obsolete regulations should be updated:

When the legislature convenes in January, my intent is to work with the Governor and Legislature to appropriately update the statute to meet modern-day circumstances. Until that time, I see no reason for our office to require registration of free, not-for-credit offerings.

The internet wins, again.

We've talked a few times about how the US seems to be leading the charge to block a treaty that would increase the ability of blind and other disabled people to get around copyright restrictions to access certain works. The treaty has been in negotiations for ages -- and the US position has, at times, flip-flopped. However, now it seems firmly aligned with copyright maximalist lobbyists. The latest report from the negotiations is that publishers and the movie studios have convinced US negotiators to push back on this treaty:

The United State is playing a big major role, and led by David Kappos' USPTO, generally is aligned with the publishers in efforts to narrow the agreement and limit its benefits to persons with disabilities, and is increasingly isolated in its opposition to a decision that the nature of the "instrument" will be a treaty rather than a softer non-blinding recommendation or model law. One major objective of the US delegation is to exclude persons who are deaf. Another is to limit the exceptions to text, and exclude any audiovisual content or related rights. Both of these negotiating objectives are designed to keep the U.S. movie and television industry happy. The U.S. has also been seeking ways to support other publisher friendly provisions, even when they run counter to the robust exceptions found in U.S. law.

Siding with big studios and publishers over the best interests of the blind and the deaf? How nice...